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A review by reaperreads
And In Her Smile, the World by Rebecca J. Allred, Gordon B. White
4.0
I really enjoyed this! The concept was unique and familiar at the same time--cosmic horror updated with a new myth. No tentacle monsters here, though. Just the Quiet Woman, known to her followers as Amen--the woman actually responsible for creation before God stole it from her and destroyed her, reserving only her smile that he gave to women so that it might please men the way it did himself. But her smile was her power, and over the generations a cult of women has formed that believes in Amen's creation over God's pretense.
What I found most interesting about this novella was the insider's look at the cult and the struggle of a young woman, Serena, trying to understand her place in the universe when her mother gives her little guidance to work with. One of my main critiques of folk horror is the othering of non-Abrahamic traditions and making them out to be hyper-violent. So, for this novella to take a deeper look into its (fictitious) mythology from a practitioner's perspective was fascinating.
I also appreciate the bi rep; however, I wonder how the seeming binary of Amen vs God would play out when considering a spectrum of genders rather than just man vs woman.
The only reasons I went with four instead of five stars were the following: (1) I feel like this could have been expanded into a short novel since the novella still left me with questions like the one above, and (2) the writing style in the first two chapters was a little too simile/metaphor-heavy. The figurative language got to being much more well-integrated by chapter 3, though, so this is a very small thing that didn't impact the majority of my reading experience.
Finally, I read this novella because I REALLY enjoyed White's As Summer's Mask Slips short story collection. I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye out for future work from both authors!
For fans of: John Carpenter's Apocalypse trilogy, Maeve Fly by C.J. Leede, "The Evening and The Morning and The Night" by Octavia E. Butler, and Come Closer by Sara Gran
What I found most interesting about this novella was the insider's look at the cult and the struggle of a young woman, Serena, trying to understand her place in the universe when her mother gives her little guidance to work with. One of my main critiques of folk horror is the othering of non-Abrahamic traditions and making them out to be hyper-violent. So, for this novella to take a deeper look into its (fictitious) mythology from a practitioner's perspective was fascinating.
I also appreciate the bi rep; however, I wonder how the seeming binary of Amen vs God would play out when considering a spectrum of genders rather than just man vs woman.
The only reasons I went with four instead of five stars were the following: (1) I feel like this could have been expanded into a short novel since the novella still left me with questions like the one above, and (2) the writing style in the first two chapters was a little too simile/metaphor-heavy. The figurative language got to being much more well-integrated by chapter 3, though, so this is a very small thing that didn't impact the majority of my reading experience.
Finally, I read this novella because I REALLY enjoyed White's As Summer's Mask Slips short story collection. I'm definitely going to be keeping an eye out for future work from both authors!
For fans of: John Carpenter's Apocalypse trilogy, Maeve Fly by C.J. Leede, "The Evening and The Morning and The Night" by Octavia E. Butler, and Come Closer by Sara Gran